Night pressed close to the palace, heavy with smoke from the cookfires and the sound of too many frayed tempers.
The new code of conduct had gone out at sunset...Eva's neat, cruel little document...and the grounds had quieted by force if not by choice. Guards walked double patrols and the Dark Moon wolves held the inner ring, still as statues. Refugees muttered in their tents, their voices kept low by the memory of Adam's earlier roar.
And Ann didn't sleep.
She paced the length of the small lounge, then the balcony, then back again, hands clasped behind her so she wouldn't rub at the aching place between her eyes. The letter from Brad sat in a drawer she refused to open. The edict copies sat signed on the desk. The portal foundation sat in her head like a blueprint she couldn't stop redrawing.
You know what would help? Maeve asked sweetly. A fight. Clears the sinuses.
"Shut up," Ann whispered, but her chest agreed. She was wound tight enough to sing.
Bootsteps hit the corridor. Heavy. Familiar. Angry.
The latch turned without a knock and Adam stormed in like he'd been thrown, door shutting hard behind him. Dust streaked his boots, the road still clinging to his clothes and his wolf rippling dangerously under his skin.
He didn't bother with courtesy; he never needed it when he was like this.
They stared at each other across the room, the space suddenly seeming tighter.
"You're back," Ann said.
They were useless words and she knew it, but they bought her a few seconds to compose herself.
"I never left," he said, voice low. "I was one courtyard away all night putting out all of the fires you lit when you invited the lycans in."
Her jaw tightened. "If you came in here to accuse me..."
"I came here because every time I turn a corner I hear my mate's name chained to a man who should have been thrown off these grounds the second I stepped through the gates," he snapped. "And because the people you've decided to shelter spit on my wolves and you still say 'be patient.'"
"Because patience kept a boy from getting torn in half this afternoon," Ann shot back. "Because the Lycans we accepted didn't retaliate and I refuse to teach them that rage is the only language we speak."
Adam's hands flexed as he fought his wolf.
"Rage is the only language that these beasts understand."
"And it's the only language that gets us killed when we use it on our own steps," she hissed. "We cannot win a war if we're busy staging demonstrations against civilians to make ourselves feel big."
He took two steps closer, his aura heating the air.
"Don't put this on me."
"Then stop making it about your pride."
Something flashed across his face...hurt, hot and dangerous.
"It's not pride, Ann. It's protection, for you and the pups that you carry."
"It's both," she said, quieter. "And sometimes your protection feels like a fucking cage."
The silence after that sentence seemed to crowd even the edges of the room.
Maeve whistled, low.
And there it is. You opened the vein.
Adam's jaw worked and his eye twitched as he leaned in, palms braced on the back of a chair like he needed something to hold that wasn't a throat.
"Tell me why Brad's note was on your desk."
Ann's stomach went cold.
"Because he sent one. Because he has a border and it touches mine. Because logistics."
"Because logistics," he echoed, bitter. "Because he thinks he still gets to send instructions about how my guards look at his scouts."
"He asked that they don't snarl at his liaison like a disease," Ann said, voice clipped. "So I told Coral to feed the liaison and reminded Security that when I say liaison, that means not a target. That's not romance, Adam. That's civil command."
His wolf pushed forward and Adam's eyes seemed to glow from within as his breath came in harsher bursts.
"Command would be telling him to keep his name out of this goddamn palace until I say otherwise."
"Command is telling you to keep your claws out of my staff," Ann snapped. "You nearly put a man through the stones today because he yelled. Do you want to impress the nobles? Because that's certainly what happened. Well fucking done. They were thrilled."
He flinched as if she had slapped him.
"And while we're counting things that are wrong, " he snarled, his voice dropping, "you let him stand where I stand."
The words hit harder than the door had.
Ann held his glare.
"I let him occupy a square of floor for several days because he planted himself there and because it made assassins hesitate. That's it."
He stepped even closer; the chair creaked between them.
"You know what every mouth outside this door says? They say he belonged there. They say it looked right."
"And you're going to let them tell you what's true?" she asked, incredulous. "You, of all people?"
He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The answer was written in the tight line of his mouth, in the way his hands shook. Doubt...poison the nobles had poured into the cracks...had found purchase and rooted in.
There it is, Queenie. Not logic. Wounded pride and the threat to his claim on you. Go carefully or rip it open and be done.
Ann chose neither. "Do you trust me," she asked, very quietly. "Yes or no."
His throat worked. "I don't trust him."
"That wasn't the question."
He stared at her a heartbeat too long. The beat where love should have bulldozed everything else and when it didn't, something inside her shifted and didn't slide back into place.
"I trust you," he said finally, but the words came out strangled, and the but hung in the room like smoke.
"And yet," Ann said with a bitter smile. "Here we are."
He raked a hand through his hair and turned away like he was trying to find a wall to argue with instead.
"I spent all day hearing your name and his together like a chant. I spent all day dragging my wolves through a crowd that would have drawn blood if they thought they could get away with it. And you want calm. Calm for them. Calm for him. But when exactly is it calm for me?"